What Is A Good Conversion Rate For A Real Estate Investors Website?

You’ve probably heard the phrase “conversion rate” tossed around quite a bit over the last year or two.

And that can be a great thing… or a bad thing.

Great… if the information the person or website is telling you is accurate… not so great if it’s inaccurate and you follow their advice blindly without doing some testing of your own (or for Carrot customers… we do it for you).

Our Methods: Our Carrot members generate 10k leads per month through our platform and nearly 90k visitors each month… so the data we’re delivering in this post is based off of the data we have available – which is, as far as we know, the largest dataset on real estate investor website conversion available anywhere. So if your website converts higher, and you’ve generated at least 200 seller leads through your site… awesome! Kudos to you. I’d love to see your site :-)

So first… lets dive into the basics of what conversion rate is (specifically for a real estate investor website) and then we’ll dive into why it’s important… how to do it right… and give you a few resources that we use ourselves to improve our conversion rates.

What Is Conversion Rate Anyway?

The “conversion rate” on your website is simply the ratio between the number of people who land on your website vs. the number of people who “convert” on your website to become a lead.

That could be a cash buyer lead, motivated seller, tenant, private lender… etc.

The “conversion rate” is pretty simple to calculate.

If you have 100 visitors to that page… and 15 of them put in their info on that page and opt in as a lead for you… that is a 15% conversion rate.

A Test In Progress On A Carrot Members Website: This is a shot from an actual test we’re running right now on a motivated seller website.

How Do You Find Out The Conversion Rate?

There are a few ways to find out the conversion rate of your website.

The easiest and most accurate is using a software tool… like Google Content Experiments in your Google Analytics account (FREE, but not very user friendly), or the one that we use… VisualWebsiteOptimizer.com (about $49/mo, but MUCH easier to use).

You just have to get a bit of code from the software, put it on your website (really easy to do inside your InvestorCarrot account – hit up our support if you need help)… and then you set up the test in the software. Let traffic come in and it’ll tell you how many people convert as a lead.

It may take you a few hours your first time to set up a test… and unless you’re getting 100 visitors to your website each month… it’s probably not worth setting up a test (it would take many many months to come up with any real info because your traffic is so low).

If you’re on a budget and are not techie… you can just count the number of leads you had come in in a certain time period… look up the # of visitors in that same time period on your analytics… then divide the two.

Or, if you’re an InvestorCarrot member… and you’re getting over 100 visitors a month to your site, we’ll do your conversion rate testing and optimization for you! Just let us know through support.

What Is A Good Conversion Rate For A Real Estate Investors Website?

One of the biggest misconceptions we hear all the time (and I once thought the same thing) about conversion rates from our real estate investor clients… is that there is a “normal” conversion rate for a website in our industry.

Factors include… where the visitor is coming from before they hit your website, is your site setup to convert well (like all of our Carrot sites are), credibility on your website, colors, your logo can sometimes make or break conversions, the time of the year (yes, that can matter), and more.

Cash Buyer Website Conversion Rates

On one cash buyer test we ran earlier this year… at one point that website was converting almost 40% of all people who landed on the page to a cash buyer lead (picture of test results mid-way through below):

Cash Buyer Conversion: Results mid-way through a “split-test” on a cash buyer website for one of our InvestorCarrot members.

That is a pretty darn high conversion rate… even for a cash buyer website (we’ve worked hard to get our Carrot websites converting high – that’s why so many people LOVE having their websites on Carrot!).

But later on in that same test… the conversion rate settled in in the mid 20’s.

Why?

In this case, the website didn’t change… it was mainly a “traffic issue”. She started doing Craigslist marketing which tends to yield a higher volume of traffic but lower conversion rate.

But on average… we’re seeing cash buyer websites (when people drive the visitor to our home pages which are geared to convert well) convert between 20-40% of visitors to a cash buyer with quality traffic.

Motivated Seller Website Conversion Rates

We’ve heard people come to us asking if our motivated seller websites are converting at “25% like they used to 5 years ago”… and the answer is.. nope.

5 or 6 years ago… before every investor on the block had a website… before 30%-40% of all searches were on cell phones (and most websites aren’t optimized for mobile) and during the recession when hoards of sellers were in dire straights and just needed out (and were willing to opt into any and every website online they could find just to get out of the situation fast)… the conversion rates on a motivated seller site could consistently reach 20% or more.

And that’s a stellar conversion rate for a motivated seller website.

But times have changed a bit and conversion rates these days are a bit softer for motivated sellers.

Sellers today have more choices as far as websites to engage with online… and they are pickier with who they’ll work with online. They want to see a website that feels credible, that they can trust, and that is easy to use.

So we’re seeing motivated seller websites (depending on the quality of traffic they’re sending to the site, and what they have done to their site to improve / decrease the conversion rate) convert from 7% to 20%. 20% is an outlier… and only with organic search traffic (SEO) or direct type in traffic (See pics of real tests from our Carrot clients below).

What We Consider Average For A Sellers Website (Your Site Should Convert At Least 8-10%)

Lot’s ‘O House Seller Leads: This website is a highly trafficked home buyers website. We’re building in some of our “Carrot Magic” into his website. The same stuff that’s already built into our Motivated Seller websites for our InvestorCarrot members.

And another…

What We Consider Really Solid For Sellers

A Surprising Video Test: This test is on a Carrot clients website that gets 100% of its traffic from SEO (using our 3 Lead Per Day Training). But we ran a test recently to see if video would increase the conversion rate on her website… the result is surprising :-)

And another…

What We Consider Stellar (this rarely happens long-term on a website.
During this test this Carrot customer got a GREAT stretch of quality traffic.
But the test is still early… so the rate will likely dip below 20%)

Conversion Rate: This is a shot from an actual test we’re running right now on a motivated seller website.

All in all, you should shoot to have your motivated seller website convert at least 10% of your visitors to leads at a minimum… and work your way toward a 15-20% conversion rate (for a quality lead) on the top end in today’s environment with building solid credibility on your website, great quality traffic (Facebook ads suck for conversion rate for sellers, decent for buyers and tenants… but terrible for sellers).

Rent to Own / Tenant Buyer Website Conversion Rates

Rent to own tenant buyers and tenants of rental properties tend to convert pretty darn well when they land on a website that is setup to convert (like our Carrot sites are). A tenant (or even buyer) tend to be putting in their info on your site to see available properties… so it’s a much lower commitment than a seller has in deciding to sell their house to someone.

A Really Solid (But normal on Carrot) Conversion Rate For a Rent To Own Site

Rent To Own Leads Flowing In: In this actively running test on a rent to own website of a Carrot client in Birmingham… you can see in the early stages of the test their site is converting on average close to 40%. This isn’t out of the norm on our rent to own websites.

Our rent to own websites have been performing really really well. After several rounds of testing (and we continue to test and improve these sites for our customers each month) we tend to see tenant buyers converting on the website between 20-40%. One customer’s website even had a string of several months (and several hundred leads) where their site converted nearly 50%. Their traffic was very high quality. But from Craigslist traffic we’re seeing anywhere from a 20-35% conversion rate… and I just happen to know that the traffic on the above test is coming from a Facebook campaign.

Summing Up The Basics Of Conversion Rates For Real Estate Investor Websites

Improving the conversion rate of our Carrot platform is something we absolutely love to do and it’s fun as heck.

We’re running 17 different tests right now on our InvestorCarrot members websites… actively working to improve the conversion rate of our platform each and every month.

We’ll dive into conversion rate optimization more in later posts… and we’ll show you actual test results so you know how you can improve the conversion rate on your own websites (Carrot or non-Carrot)… we’ll walk you through how to run a good split test… we’ll show you the top 5 things you should test FIRST on your websites, and more.

Just keep an eye out for our lessons each week here on this blog (and in your email inbox) and hit us with questions.

Hit Me With Your Conversion Rate Questions Below!

So… do you know the conversion rate on your website? If so, hit me with a comment below! If not, hit me with your URL and we’ll take a look at your site and give you some feedback.

And as always, if you feel InvestorCarrot may be a fit for you for your real estate investor websites and you want better results online… we’d love to have you in the Carrot community. Check out our plans and hit us up with questions anytime!

About the Author – Trevor Mauch

Trevor is the CEO of InvestorCarrot and knows a thing or two about inbound marketing and generating leads online in the real estate industry. As an investor himself, he's generated tens of thousands of real estate leads and is a leading expert in inbound marketing for investors and agents. In addition, his true passion is helping entrepreneurs grow businesses that truly help you live a life of purpose.

Looking at the way it’s set up and what it looks like to the visitor when they land on it… your website as it is currently setup just won’t convert very well.

The moving action video doesn’t match the actual type of person landing on your website looking to sell. It looks like corporate type guys meeting… when your home seller is just a regular person w/ a problem that needs helped.

So you have to match the message to your market.

Second, the Call to Action on the page is very weak and has a lot of room for improvement to increase conversions.

Really… conversion rate optimization and converting visitors to leads is something that’s taken me 7+ years to learn and hone… so now I can see a page and know whether it probably converts well or not.

We’ve built all of this experience into our Carrot websites… so from day one… when you setup your websites on our platform they convert well.

All of the conversion numbers above are from Carrot members websites.

With that said… we’re also constantly testing new things to further improve how well our websites convert sellers, buyers, tenants, tenant buyers, etc.

Not to use this as an opportunity to “sell ya”… but if conversion rate optimization isn’t something you’re good at or want to spend the time learning… that’s why our members love InvestorCarrot.

You can just worry about getting people to your website… our system takes care of the rest.

In the end you end up saving much more money going w/ us because our system performs better… and you capture more leads with the same traffic vs. your current site.

We’d love to work w/ you if it’s a fit.

If you want to start generating motivated seller leads… that’s what our members are doing everyday.

We’ve actually tested it on the EHB site along with dozens of others and more often than not having a video there decreases the conversion on the home page. Now… we always follow the data here at Carrot so in our experience is videos tend to not improve performance for motivated house sellers. With that said… there are instances where video can definitely help if done right. It has to build credibility and make the viewer leave the video with more connection to you and feel that you are the person who can help them. It can’t be those animated videos you can make on those video creation apps.

Also, the video needs to have a solid message and walk the viewer through that journey on how you can help them and how you’re different from the other options out there.

Last, test it. It may improve performance for you… it may not. Or it may be a wash (like it was for Brad) and then you could just decide which one you want to represent you on the home page. Test it, or if you’re a Carrot customer let us know and we can test it for you!